The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (190721).Volume XIII. The Victorian Age, Part One.

VIII. Nineteenth-Century Drama.

§ 4. H. H. Milman.

The plays of Henry Hart Milman, afterwards dean of St. Pauls, reveal a taste somewhat surer; although, in Fazio, a tragedy published in 1815 and produced in London in 1818, there is plenty of false fire. Milman took inspiration rather from Fletcher or Massinger than from Kotzebue or Monk Lewis; and Fazio, at least, is a very lively drama, if not a good tragedy. It is a tale, placed in Italy, of robbery and supposed murder, of splendid harlotry and devoted conjugal affection; and its acting qualities kept it on the stage nearly all through the nineteenth century. It has another title to remembrance: from it, Hazlitt drew a speech which he hurled at the head of Coleridge in the attack referred to above. Milmans other plays show less of false taste and less of theatrical merit, being, for the most part, dramatic poems rather than stage-plays. The Fall of Jerusalem (1820) and The Martyr of Antioch (1822) are both founded upon a legitimately conceived struggle between two passions or ideas. Belshazzar (1822) contains some good lyrics. Anne Boleyn (1826), Milmans last dramatic composition, was, also, his poorest. He cannot, perhaps, be accused of misrepresenting facts and characters so grossly as some later historical dramatists; but his anxiety to state a good case for protestantism against Roman catholicism mars the dramatic quality of the play. In this connection, the plays of Henry Montague Grover are worth mention. Grover, in 1826, published a play on the same subject, Anne Boleyn, in the preface to which he hints that Milman had made unacknowledged use of his manuscript. Such a complaint is not uncommon among dramatic authors.